PLAY BALL!
Just in time for the baseball All-Star break… Go here for more…
ROBOT ROCK!
So, this is what it’s come to…. Somewhere Mo Tucker is weeping…
GIL AFTERMATH
Postscript: Despite a flight delay that had Gilberto Gil arriving more than half an hour late, the discussion (see post below) went off as planned. And although copyright isn’t exactly a hot and sexy issue for the masses, a crowd of a hundred or so (my guess) hung around until questioning was shut off to…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Bubbly bubbly Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #176! Attrition — The Eternity EP (MVD Audio/Two Gods) :: Julia Weller sings with a haunting voice that combines the best of Nico with Diamanda Galás; Martin Bowes plays psychotic electronics that make Eno sound positively sane; and Franck Dematteis plays viola that makes nut case John Cale sound…
Spontaneous creation
Metaphors are certainly going to get confused when describing the work of guitarist Bill Frisell. During three decades of recorded works, Frisell has worked various teeming waters of American music, mining the rich vein of our collective musical heritage, while traveling restlessly down many a back road looking for sonic adventure. How else, aside from…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Kwame’s future
Dragging out a mess is consuming and impoverishing Detroit.
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Night and Day
WEDNESDAY • 18 GILBERTO GIL AND BROAD BAND STRUMMING STATESMAN Sadly, the closest thing we Yanks have to Gilberto Gil would be the late Sonny Bono, a lightweight ’60s pop singer-turned-conservative congressman. Brazil’s Gil, in comparison, has been a musical heavyweight since the ’60s — threatening enough to be jailed and forced into exile for…
Growing great
Small farming is big business for Judy Day.
Considering growth
Detroit, thank God, is no Los Angeles. We have no Eli Broad. No billion-year-old billionaire collector with bad taste shoving the same old shit in his collection down our throats in his brand-new masterfully-designed museum — a museum, naturally, in his name. As a Detroiter, I am happy to be able to lay eyes all…
Bigger Stronger Faster*
The public debate over the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports has been reduced to a simple equation: steroids are cheating, and cheating is wrong. Not only wrong, but un-American. In the insightful, mind-altering documentary Bigger Stronger Faster (The Side Effects of Being American), Christopher Bell shows there’s a lot more to this story than…
Going green in southeast Michigan
Envision a neighborhood of single-family homes constructed entirely out of artfully arranged, recycled shipping containers. Yes, shipping containers. The ubiquitous sort we all drive by in the rail yard on West Vernor Highway in Southwest Detroit: piles of colorful steel boxes stacked up like oversized Legos. Just such a project, conceptualized by local architect Steven…
The Animation Show
Not to be confused with Spike and Mike’s endless spool of fart jokes, violence and misogyny, Mike Judge (“King of the Hill,” “Office Space”) curates this fourth anthology of traveling animated shorts gathered from around the world, light in tone and comic in spirit. The program runs the gamut from Grant Orchard’s Atari-meets-Jackson Pollock “Lovesport:…
Rush for the gush
You and I and everyone who isn’t CEO of a petroleum conglomerate knows the price of oil is too bloody high. For some, however, the cost is far greater than $4.50 a gallon. Gerald, a West Texas oil driller who bears an uncanny resemblance to Tigers skipper Jim Leyland, has lost the best part of…
The Happening
M. Night Shyamalan’s long slide into filmmaking irrelevance picks up speed with The Happening, a poorly titled, apocalyptic horror misfire. Mark Wahlberg plays high school science teacher Elliot Moore. John Leguizamo is Julian, his best friend and fellow math teacher. Neither has much personality, but they sure do talk about “science” and “math” a lot.…
Motor City Cribs
Frankie Bank$ lives in a loft.
Gamma, gamma, hey!
In 2003’s “Hulk,” director Ang Lee favored a dark, analytical approach that made the Hulk an expression of deep childhood trauma. This new version is more about adult anger management, with heavy nods to the beloved late ’70s Bill Bixby TV version. Edward Norton is a superior choice for the part, in which Dr. Banner…
Couch Trip
The Wayward Cloud Strand The Wayward Cloud is, in some ways, a greatest hits collection of themes and motifs from Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming Liang’s previous films: the obsession with water from Rebels of the Neon God, the comic musical interludes from The Hole, the characters from What Time is it There? reprising their roles.…
Stuck
It takes talent and skill to turn a sick joke into a successful 90-minute movie, but the prowess of B-movie director Stewart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond, Space Truckers) make “Stuck” a satisfying foray into gallows humor and squirm-inducing violence. Tom Bardo (Stephen Rea) is a down-on-his-luck middle-aged project manager who’s been kicked to the curb…
Talk it over
No permission to cheat for sex-starved husband.
The Promotion
Seann William Scott grinds off the more abrasive parts of his persona to play Doug, a long-suffering assistant manger at a Chicago-area supermarket, marked as a “shoo-in” for the head job at the chain’s newest outlet. Unfortunately, there’s a speed bump in the shape of John C. Reilly’s aggressively chipper Richard, who sweeps down from…
Keeping distance
As Obama rises, Detroit lacks a leader who can deliver him votes.
Sugary delights
Breakfast is great. More specifically, breakfast is the one meal of the day when you can get away with eating cookies and candy as a meal. Sugary cereal. Donuts. Pastries. A handful of Chips Ahoy (which the cereal industry made perfectly justifiable for breakfast via cereals like Cookie Crisp). These can all, in their own…
007 garbage
Why is GDRRA treating public information as if it were “James Bond stuff”?
Chicken galore
Pollo Chapin serves black beans, store-bought tortillas, and chicken, chicken, then eggs and then more chicken (100 pieces for $92). But mixed in with the wings and thighs are some typical Guatemalan delights, such as tamales, (masa made with broth and lard, stuffed with pork or chicken and, sometimes, an olive, wrapped in a banana…
Court and sparks
Sexual harassment suit hits Third Judicial Circuit Court of Michigan.
Letters to the Editor
Pulling answers from a hat Hello Larry Gabriel! Regarding your column, “Can it work here?” (Metro Times, June 4) — bingo! Thanks for the short paragraph about electing city council members by district. You are so right, and I have been banging that issue for too many years! Why don’t Detroit City Council members each…
Discovering Connie Calloway
In media interviews, board meetings and a few other public appearances since she arrived in Detroit last summer, Calloway has described questionable accounting methods that she says she is bringing into line with accepted practices. She has appeared to be honest and forthcoming about the district’s situation, discussing deficits, dropouts, plans for academic changes, and…
Tales of industrial din
When Canadian avant-garde punk legends Simply Saucer make their Motor City debut this week, it will be the fulfillment of a dream that dates back decades. From the SRC and the MC5 to the Stooges and ? & the Mysterians, the musical spirit of Detroit has loomed heavily on the Saucer’s radar since the group’s…
COMMON CREATIVITY
Remixers of the world, here’s a tip, go to culturalliure.org/musica_lliure.php and download Gilberto Gil’s Brazilian carnival hit “Oslodum.” Splice and dice pretty much to your hearts’ content – as long as you give due credit, don’t resell it or give anyone else permission to sell what you’ve turned it into. The explanation of why Gil…
DEASTRO DOWNLOAD…
Detroit fave Deastro is currently a featured artist on the popular indie music download site eMusic.com. “The Shaded Forests” is a featured free track, and folks who get that and love it (and trust me, they’ll love it) can then pick up an eMusic exclusive album called Keeper’s. Culled from his prolific home recordings, these…
